


Ubiquitous

by deathwailart



Series: Fiachra Surana [4]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Elves, Fantastic Racism, Gen, Mages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 13:46:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2027322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fiachra is so damned tired of how mages and elves are treated.</p>
<p>Written for the 30 day drabble challenge: ubiquitous</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ubiquitous

The thing about being a Mage is that the hatred for what you are is everywhere.  
  
It's in your home and community – your family might try to shelter you, might still love you like Fiachra's did but he's heard enough horror stories from his friends and through the Circle, abandonment, being shunned, being told they're damned and abominations, some cases where parents even tried to kill the child and 'rid the world of their sin'. Fiachra knows how lucky he was that his parents tried to love him as best they could until the Templars came and he doesn't blame them for not hiding him, not in the alienage where even as a little boy he knew better than to think they were safe. They're the first to suffer and the last to be helped and the only reason that's changed now is because he's a Grey Warden and he doesn't let people talk down to him or treat him like their servant. But in the Circle there are Templars who watch them constantly. They are taught their history, the wicked men of Tevinter – no one ever talks about how the elves had magic so long ago and nothing bad came of it then, that they were ageless and barely comprehensible until men came, how men corrupted and twisted something that was never theirs – and the enslavement – again, of the ones who taught them – and the pain. The Mother and Sisters and Templars, all of them crowding them into the halls for prayer, walking between neat rows to make sure they're saying their prayers.  
  
It was never good if they thought you were being silent or not giving it your all.  
  
Out in the real world there are the eyes that crawl over him – of course him being an elf just makes it worse because they're used to elves being theirs to command and here's one wandering around, bold as you like, quick to answer back, with the power to toss a fireball at them – the moment they realise he's got a stave strapped to his back. Sten's remarks sting and he never admits that he has more than one nightmare about it, his mouth stitched shut and he's almost _relieved_ the Chantry haven't gone that far. Yet. Silence was so often a punishment, being made to stand in a corner with your back to the rest, unable to speak until one of them came to fetch you and sometimes you were stood there for hours until your legs trembled and your feet were on fire. Here it's a remark here and there. Always 'damned Mages'. He's even had to deal with a comment that he's doing all of this as some sort of atonement.  
  
He walks away because he doesn't want to get in a fight because sometimes he feels like he'll never be able to stop if he opens his mouth and there's so much more to do. But the unfairness of him all makes him want to be sick or to scream. Because Fiachra perhaps made one mistake in trusting Jowan but being made Tranquil will forever haunt his nightmares the way it does so many Mages and there needs to be another way – death or something worse and it's just another way for that hatred to manifest. Fiachra's ancestors didn't ask for their magic to be stolen and used against them, to see their homeland sunk and their gods lost and their own freedom ground beneath human heels. They didn't want to take the Golden City. They used to walk the Fade freely and he can't even explain it to anyone – Wynne is too loyal to the Circle and she and Morrigan, much as he loves Morrigan and as much as she is different, are both human and Zevran is an elf but he has no magic, even when he has no malice towards it.  
  
It feels a very lonely life sometimes now that he's out of the Circle and can actually do something with all that anger, all that bitterness and he wonders if that too, is their lot in life as well, hatred from the rest of the world and a sorrow you can't really explain, an aching for something that was never really yours.


End file.
